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| Kathmandu, Wednesday March 05, 2003 Falgun 21, 2059. |
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‘Rising input cost hits
Nepal’s agro-output’
Post Report
KATHMANDU, March 4 : Nepal’s overall agriculture
productivity has always failed to match its immense potential due mainly to ever-rising
cost of agro-inputs, states a report recently prepared by the government.
The soaring cost of various agro-inputs
including irrigation, fertilisers and seeds among others has adversely affected the entire
agriculture sector, which has been generating income to almost 83 per cent of the
population.
The report prepared by Nepal Agriculture
Research Council (NARC) was presented at the 9th regional steering committee meeting
organised by Rice Wheat Consortium in the capital today.
Presenting Nepal’s paper, agronomist J
Tripathi said that unless the farmers are backed up financially either by the government
or pro-farmers agencies, the agriculture productivity of the country is unlikely to grow
from the present level.
Other participating countries including
Pakistan, Bangladesh and India among others also presented papers on the recent study of
their agriculture sector. All the participants of the countries were of the opinion that
encouragement to farmers is a must to adapt the innovative farming against the traditional
farming in order to raise agro-output.
Nepal’s paper, which was based on the
field study report of last three years also stressed on the need of introducing innovative
farming. "Even the small scale of modernised farming can make a difference in
increasing the overall agro-output," said Tripathi while presenting the paper.
Despite the disappointing performance of
Nepal’s agriculture sector in recent times, experts are optimistic that the
agro-output of Nepal would rise in coming days with the introduction of innovative farming
in some major Terai areas.
According to Tripathi’s report, a few
areas of some Terai districts of Nepal including Parsa, Bara, Rupandehi have already
adopted the innovative farming. "During the recent field visit, our team found that
the innovative farming techniques that include zero tilling, bed plantation, reduced
tilling and surface seeding methods among others has helped to grow the regional output.
During the field visit, the Nepali research
team also found that sowing wheat immediately after harvesting paddy helps to raise wheat
output. "The wheat sowed during mid-November always gives more than by 55 per cent
output against the wheat sowed after that period," states the report.
The report has also stressed on the need of increasing
agro-productivity of the country as the arable land for per person in Nepal has decreased
by almost 500 square metres in last 40 years. "There is an immediate need of
increasing productivity of the country to counter the rising fear of food insecurity due
to the gradual decrease in production," cautions the report of Nepal.
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